"Of murdering my uncle? Yes. It is due to his information that I am here, as he can help me to prove your guilt."
"My guilt!" Madame Alpenny snapped her fingers, with a crimson face. "Oh, that for my guilt! I am innocent."
"Naturally you say so. But can you prove your innocence?"
"I can." She said this with so much assurance that Hench was staggered, and began to wonder if he had made a mistake. "See you, that Mistare Spruce make me confess to him and then betrays me to you. Beast!"
"You should not have trusted him," said Owain coldly. "Any one can see that he is a bad lot. I wonder that a woman of your penetration, Madame, behaved in so rash a manner."
"Rash! Ah, but I did not behave rash. He forced me to speak. He knew so much that I had to tell him all."
"About the murder?"
"I am innocent of the murder," cried the woman, throwing back her head in a fierce way. "Hear what I speak, and then you shall see. Mistare Spruce was in this room when I told how I met your father. Is it not so?"
"Yes," agreed Hench. "He heard the whole conversation."
"I said," went on Madame Alpenny, "that there was a mystery about you, and now you know what the mystery was. Mistare Spruce, wanting to make money out of you and thinking that I knew something--which I did--watched me as a cat a mouse. I went to Cookley saying that I had to go away to find an engagement for my daughter. Is it not so?" she asked again.